


Break Over the Horizon

by rosecake



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10755675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/pseuds/rosecake
Summary: Jyn manages to rescue her father from Eadu, but that's not the end of it for them.Everyone lives AU.





	Break Over the Horizon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/gifts).



> This was a joy to write, I hope you have a happy May 4th!

The medical staff on Yavin 4 had done a lot to clean up her father since she and the others had brought him back from Eadu. The whole trip back she'd kept her hand pressed to his neck, feeling his weak pulse under her fingers, because without that physical proof his heart was still beating it was too easy to convince herself he was dead. He looked better now, dry and clean, with fresh bandages covering the burns from where he'd been hit in the chest and shoulder by laser fire. 

He still hadn't woken up, though. 

She knew that he eventually would. Jyn had long ago accepted that the world was an unfair place, but there were limits to what even she was willing to tolerate. And she could not make herself believe that after nearly fifteen years of separation she could come _so close_ to having her father back only to have him slip away again. The hope that had surged through her on seeing his message had only lived within her for a little over a day, but it was strong. She'd spent years building her defenses, carefully crafted walls of cynicism and apathy, and his words had torn through them in seconds. She knew full well that it was smarter not to get her hopes up, and yet here she was, so sure that the universe would give her this one thing. 

He had to wake up. 

"Jyn?" The sound of her name pulled her attention away from her father. Cassian was next to her, close enough to touch her, and she hadn't even heard him walk in. "Bodhi has the shuttle ready. If we're going to do this we need to leave now." 

Thinking of their imminent mission to Scarif, it occurred to her that she might not be there to see him when he woke. There was a good chance the mission was a suicide run, and in that case it might actually be better if he never did. And there was still a part of her that wanted to stay behind, curled up around her father in his hospital bed, and just wait for the end. From what they'd seen on Jedha it probably wouldn't be a very long wait. 

For some reason, though, people were looking to her. Cassian was looking at her with expectation in his eyes at that very moment, even though she was just some girl who'd only shown up to the fight a few days ago. She _needed_ to go. It would all fall apart if she didn't. 

She looked to her father, pale and vulnerable in the bed, and looked back to Cassian. 

"Is he really safe here?" she asked. 

The worry had been knocking around in the back of her mind ever since they got back from Eadu. The Alliance had already tried to kill him once, twice if she separated out Cassian's orders from the air strike on the Eadu facility. And they'd very nearly been successful with that air strike. 

Cassian looked away from her, and her fingers curled involuntarily in the sheets of her father's hospital bed. 

In truth, Cassian's answer didn't really matter. She'd already made her decision. The Alliance may have failed her father, too caught up in their fear and panic to take advantage of the opportunity he'd sacrificed so much to give them, but Jyn wasn't going to. She was going to carry out his plan, even if the thought of leaving him behind tore at her. 

"Chancellor Mothma wants him alive, and this is her base," said Cassian. "This is her Alliance." 

She would have preferred a more conclusive answer, but then again, if Cassian had given her a straight-forward guarantee of her father's safety she might not have believed him. As it was, she was at least assured that her father had better odds of living through the next few days than she did. 

Still, she wasn't quite ready to leave him. Her father had sent her a message, one that had started her down this path, and she realized that the least she could do was leave him with a message of her own. But she had no idea where to scrounge up a spare data pad or paper, and they were already out of time. And just the thought of trying to put something into words, trying to describe everything that she'd felt the past few days, the past _fifteen years_ , made her throat close up. 

"Jyn, we need to go," said Cassian, his voice soft. "Unless you changed your mind?" 

"I haven't changed my mind." 

She leaned down and kissed her father on his forehead. "I love you," she said, hoping that even in the depths of unconsciousness he could still somehow hear her words, that it was enough. "I promise I'll be back." 

She could only hope the universe wouldn't make liar out of her.

*****

Not all of Rogue One made it back to the base. But, as ashamed as Jyn was to admit it, all the people who were important to her did.

The Tantive IV did not make it back, nor did the plans they'd fought so hard to recover. Jyn does her best to avoid thinking about it. The princess had been captured, and either she'd managed to make provisions to get the plans back to the Alliance before her capture or she hadn't. Nobody knew where Princess Leia was being held, or if they did they hadn't bothered to tell Jyn, so it wasn't as if she could attempt a daring rescue even if she had been up for a second suicide run in as many days. 

She focused her attention on her father instead. He was still unconscious, but the doctor had the first legitimately good news she'd heard in what felt like years.

"His vitals are doing better and the swelling's gone down," said Dr. Kersel. "He is going to wake up, it's just a matter of when." 

Jyn exhaled heavily, grateful to hear her hopes confirmed. "Thank you," she said. 

Over the next few days she spent most of her time in the hospital wing, watching over him. The base was a hive of activity around her, but to no real end. She'd seen it before - people spinning their wheels because they knew something bad was coming and they couldn't sit still in the face of impending doom, even if none of their frantic action was going to stop the inevitable from crashing down on them. She didn't feel guilty about staying out of it. 

Bodhi kept her company most of the time. He was the only one on the base besides her who knew her father - probably better than she did, despite his assurances otherwise - and she could see her own concern reflected in his eyes. Baze and Chirrut came and went as well, just as purposeless on the base as she and Bodhi, and so did Cassian, even though he surely had more important duties he should have been looking after. Cassian and Baze were both lit up with nervous energy, but Chirrut was the same as ever, confident that the plans would come back to them in time. 

When Jyn came back from a much needed shower it was only Bodhi by her father's side. He was sleeping, slumped over in one of the chairs, his head lying on his arms, which were crossed over the edge of the bed. She knew how uncomfortable it was sleeping like that, having spent a lot of time in the same position over the past few days. 

She nudged him awake, and he looked at her through bleary eyes. "Go sleep in a real bed," she said. In truth, all the base had for them at the moment were cots, but the cots were still a lot more comfortable than the hospital wing's chairs. 

"Okay," he said, his voice slightly slurred as he stood. He was still half asleep. He looked at her father, then back at her. "Come get me if you need anything," he said. 

"I will," said Jyn, settling into the chair he'd left vacant. Her father may not have woken up yet, but he was looking better every day. There was more color in his face, and the dark marks under his eyes were less pronounced. It was easy enough to pretend that nothing was wrong, that he was just sleeping. She took his hand in hers, and she imagined that it even felt warmer than it had in the past. Like life was coming back to him. 

Her heart almost stopped when his hand twitched in hers. 

"Papa?" she asked, softly, not sure that she hadn't just imagined it. 

Then his eyes opened, and almost immediately snapped shut against even the dim lighting of the hospital wing. He groaned, and Jyn squeezed his hand tighter. Jyn had been knocked out before, she knew how awful it was waking up from something like that. He'd been unconscious for days. He was going to need a minute, she knew that, she just couldn't control herself enough to give it to him. 

"Papa, it's me, it's Jyn," she said, desperate to hear him say something. 

His eyes opened again, and this time they focused on her. "Stardust?" 

She'd had a long time to think about how she wanted this conversation to go, what she wanted to say, but in the moment she couldn't remember any of it. 

"I was so scared I was never going to see you again," she said, the tears she'd kept locked down for ages finally breaking free. There'd been no room for weaknesses like crying for most of her life, and she couldn't remember ever having sobbed like this, not even as a child. 

His hands had no strength in them as he pulled her closer, but she got the message and leaned over his chest and hugged him, tighter than she probably should have given his injuries. 

"Oh, Jyn," he said as she sobbed against his chest. She could smell the bacta that permeated his bandages every time she inhaled, could feel his chest rising and falling. "I thought I'd dreamed you when I saw you on Eadu." 

His voice was raspy, and it cracked in places as he spoke. He needed water. She pulled away from him and wiped a hand across her face, trying to wrench her emotions back under control as she grabbed a bottle off the table by his bed, helping him drink it. A monitor by his bed was pinging softly, and she reached out a hand and shoved at it until it stopped, and as she did so she saw one of the medical droids leaving the room. 

"Bodhi found you," he said. "I'd hoped he would, I'd hoped but-" he said, his eyes bright, and he stopped and shook his head. "The Death Star, is it - did the Alliance get the plans?" he asked. 

Jyn's chest tightened. The Death Star was the last thing she wanted to talk about, not when she finally had her father back. "We got the plans from Scarif," she said, almost choking over the words. It wasn't the truth, at least it wasn't the whole truth. But she couldn't make herself tell him that they'd gotten so close to everything he'd sacrificed so much for, she'd even held the plans in her own hands, and then they'd _lost_ them. 

The medical droid had probably gone off to tell Draven or Mothma or whoever was in charge of monitoring them that Galen Erso had finally woken up. She wasn't sure how much time they'd have before they were interrupted. 

"Was it destroyed?" he asked, trying to raise himself up off the bed, and the desperate hope in his voice nearly crushed her. She wanted so badly to just lie and say _yes_. 

"Not yet," she said. "Not yet, but we're close. We're so close." 

He dropped back against the bed, flinching as the motion jarred his shoulder. "Did Krennic shoot…" he muttered, raising a hand to touch the bandages covering most of his torso. 

She swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat at the name. She could see the man in white, blaster raised to kill, but in the end he hadn't managed to stop her. 

"No, he's dead, he died on Scarif," she said. And even if Princess Leia never did manage to get the plans back to them, even if they were all killed in a single shot by that monstrosity Krennic built, at least she would have the grim satisfaction of knowing that it had killed Krennic first. "And he wasn't the one that caused your injuries. You were hit by laser fire when the Alliance attacked Eadu. It struck over your chest and shoulder, you've been out of it for a few days. They-" she said, stopping to inhale. Her emotions were threatening to overwhelm her again. "They almost killed you, Papa." 

She was still slightly worried that someone on the base would try again. But if the Death Star was destroyed, that would be proof enough of his sabotage against the Empire. They'd be generous enough with him then. And if they failed, well, the whole Alliance was going to go up in flames before they had a chance to decide what to do with Galen Erso. 

"Understandable," he said with a ragged sigh, and his calm acceptance of it bothered her. He was the only reason the Alliance had even a chance of survival and they'd tried to kill him for it. He looked around at the meager base hospital facilities. "They changed their mind, then?" 

"For now," said Jyn. "We're on Yavin 4, their base of operations." 

Her father asked her another question, but she missed it as she jerked her head around at the sound of someone entering the room. Mon Mothma nodded at her, and Jyn relaxed a bit. Better Mothma than Draven or one of the other generals. She squeezed her father's hand and he squeezed back, but his grip was too weak to be truly reassuring. 

"Excuse me," said Mothma. "I understand the two of you would probably like some time alone, but I need to talk to your father. Time is of the essence."

*****

Mon Mothma tolerated her presence for a while, but eventually she decided Jyn was more of an obstruction than she was prepared to deal with, and Jyn was very diplomatically thrown out of the room. Jyn had been upset at first, but she'd accepted it. She was even grateful, even though she knew full well it made her a coward, that Mothma had been the one to tell her father about the destruction of Alderaan. He'd almost pulled himself together by the time she saw him again, but his eyes were glassy and red-rimmed, and when he spoke his voice was even rougher than it had been when he'd first woken up.

She almost asked him if he was okay, but she already knew full well that the answer was _no_. So she just sat with him, holding his between hers, hoping that the guilt and grief didn't kill him after the laser fire had failed. 

He'd told her, before he left her on Lah'mu, _whatever I do, I do it to protect you_. And at the time she had nodded and told him that she understood, but it had been a lie. She'd thought she'd finally understood it on Jedha, back when she'd seen the holo message, and seen what the Death Star had done to the Holy City. But it hadn't really sunk in until Alderaan. After all, Jedha wasn't the first time the Empire had destroyed a city - a Star Destroyer's turbo lasers could do the same thing, if there was time and there weren't any planetary shields in the way. 

But Alderaan was gone, a whole world and a densely populated one at that. It wasn't some Outer Rim hellhole nobody cared about it, it was a Core World, with ample planetary defenses. The Empire should have had to fight a long, bloody battle for it, but instead it had gone up in a second. The planet had been vaporized, with nothing left to mark its place in the galaxy other than the shattered debris of various satellites that had been torn apart in the shockwave. 

Who could ever be safe in a galaxy where a weapon like that existed? 

It weighed on Jyn as much as it weighed on her father. Fortunately, Princess Leia made it back to Yavin 4 just in time to save Jyn's sanity. 

She almost lost it again immediately afterwards as her father went over the plans with General Dodonna and the others. 

Dodonna rubbed a hand over his face after her father was done speaking, his eyebrows knotted together from tension as he looked at the projection of the Death Star's schematics. "You couldn't have made the damn exhaust port any bigger?" 

There was an accusation in the question, and Jyn wanted to snap at him. She wanted to snap at nearly everyone, really, because she hadn't slept more than a few hours at a time for going on two weeks now, and they'd been rough weeks. Her father's hand on her shoulder stopped her, though. 

"If I could have, I would have designed the thing to explode on the first test fire," said Galen, far calmer than Jyn could have managed in his place. "But there were multiple levels of review of everything that went into that weapon, and I was not particularly well trusted to begin with. As it was, I was lucky the sabotage wen unnoticed." 

Dodonna stared at her father, and Jyn could see that he still wasn't sold on the plan. She wanted to scream. It was so aggravating, being _so close_ and still having to deal with the pushback. 

"But you're telling me one hit here," said Dodonna, tapping the exhaust port highlighted on the plans in front of them, "that's all it's going to take?" 

"One direct hit," said Galen. He was leaning on her, lightly at the moment, but she wasn't sure how much longer he'd be able to stay upright. He was tired, it was obvious he was tired and still not anywhere close to full recovered, but his voice was still steady as he spoke. "That's all it will take." 

"We've had our own techs go over Erso's plan and the schematics," added Mon Mothma. "They've agreed that it should work." 

"Even with the targeting computers, this is going to be a nightmare," said Dodonna. 

The room went silent after that. 

Mon Mothma sighed. "The pilots will manage it. They have to." 

Jyn's chest was so tight it was difficult to breathe. Years and years of sacrifice, and it could all come down to a pilot not being able to hit the damn target?

Her father had to lean on her more heavily as they walked out of the room. He ought to be sleeping, or at the very least calmly resting somewhere, but that was impossible with the threat of the Death Star looming. 

"It's going to be fine, Jyn," her father said. She let the words wash over her, easing the strain her chest. She lets herself believe them. "I promise." 

Even if he was lying, at least they wouldn't have to worry about it for much longer.

*****

She sat by her father in the back of the control room as they watched the final battle play out. His breathing was labored, and Jyn was pretty sure he'd fall over without her and Bodhi on the other side of him to help prop him up. He'd been up for too long, he needed to sleep. He was only awake now thanks to stimulants, and she hadn't thought those were a good idea in the first place.

She leaned in closely, speaking softly enough that she wouldn't be overhead by anyone else in the room. Not that it mattered. Everyone was so intently focused on the screens in front of them that they probably wouldn't have noticed her even if she was screaming. 

"We can leave," she said. "You've done all you can. You don't have to be here for this, you can rest now." 

He smiled softly down at her, although it didn't quite reach his eyes. The battle wasn't going well enough for him to smile easily. He slid an arm around her shoulder, to comfort her, to steady himself, she wasn't sure which. Maybe both. "We need to see it finished, Jyn." 

They both flinched as another pilot was shot down, the crackle of the dead comm feed permeating the air before the comm officer had a chance to shut it off. It was down to the supposed Jedi kid now, and she could see Baze and Chirrut across the room, Chirrut on the comm trying to coach him through it. Cassian was still standing behind them, his hand covering the bottom of his face. He'd been a statue since the operation had begun. 

_One pilot left_ , she thought, raising her hand to hold her father's. Her fear of failure was mitigated by the knowledge that she won't have to live with the failure for very long. Maybe a minute at the most. 

The comms buzzed with new voices - she was dimly aware that they'd gotten backup from someplace, but that wasn't enough, one of them needed to hit the exhaust port. And with the Death Star pulling into firing range above Yavin 4 they needed to hit it _soon_ , or it wouldn't matter much for anyone planet-side. 

"Direct hit!" someone yelled. Jyn wasn't sure where the voice came from. A pilot over the speakers? Dodonna? 

There was dead silence for on, two, three seconds, and then she could see for herself on the surveillance satellite feed as the Death Star went up, dust and debris spiraling out in the most beautiful explosion she'd ever seen. Her father pitched forward, and it took Jyn and Bodhi both grabbing him to keep him upright as the room erupted into yelling. 

"You did it, it's gone," she said, wrapping her arms around him. Bodhi was doing the same thing, hugging them and babbling in excitement. "It's really gone." 

Her father looked at her, tears falling from his eyes. Jyn was crying, too. "We did it," he said, and it had been his belief that the Death Star could be stopped that had driven her this far, had driven all of them this far, and now that it was over with he seemed almost disbelieving. 

For nearly two decades it had ruled every aspect of their lives, and now it was gone.

*****

By the time they made it to Hoth her father was almost back to normal health. The bandages were still in place, and would be for a while given the depth of his burns, but he was on his feet and walking around unassisted. He'd even spent the past few days messing around with the bases's power generators, trying to get more heat out of them. He was wearing thick black robes to keep warm, and his hair and his beard were both growing out. Every time she saw him he looked more like the father she remembered from Lah'mu.

It shook the core of her when she realized that was why he looked so much more familiar to her now than he had back on Eadu. She'd spent so long repressing those memories of her life on Lah'mu that they threatened to overwhelm her as they came bubbling to the surface. 

"Are you alright, Jyn?" he asked. He must have seen some of the emotion on her face. 

"I'm fine," she said, and she was a little surprised to realize that she meant it, even if there was a hitch in her throat. He hugged her anyway. 

"Good," he said. 

She'd kept those memories repressed for so long, buried under a hard layer of bitterness, anything to keep herself from thinking about the life she used to have. If she thought about her family, she might have cried, and so she hadn't thought about them. 

But everything about the way she'd lived her life had been cracked wide open over the past few weeks. She couldn't make herself back into the girl who hid everything in a deep hole in her chest even if she wanted to. She couldn't fit it all back inside anymore, and she had tried. And she had tried, really tried, because there was something absolutely terrifying about caring for people again. About having hope for the future again. 

It was getting easier every day, though. 

"I'm so proud of you, Stardust."


End file.
